I was still a kid when my senses got caught by the sound of a harmonica. A man sitting on a bench facing the seashore was playing a beautiful sound. I was running to catch up with some playmates but the lovely tune somehow pulled me towards it, leaving me behind as my friends raced ahead.
I stood close by the player, listening. When he noticed me watching from the side, he asked if I enjoyed what I was hearing. My answer was a resounding “Yes sir! It’s beautiful.” And I urged him to play more. Instead of playing again he told me the tune, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, was a memorial to his lost love.
Of course, I was young then and didn’t really understand. Yet, I did feel his sense of suffering and the solace he gained from playing that harmonica. But I left, running to catch up with my friends, without every knowing his name.
Yet the experience stayed with me. To this day, I often recall that moment and the title of his song never slipped my mind. I searched it out and often played the best-known versions by Bob Dylan (the composer, as I discovered) with its wonderful harmonica sections, and, of course, Peter, Paul and Mary.
I imagine that’s what it’s like for many beginning harmonica players – you hear a memorable tune and you witness the expressiveness of the harmonica and you sense that something magic is in the air. So, you decide to pursue it.
Though I’m just setting out on this journey, learning about breathing techniques and simple, single note blows and draws, I feel that same excitement I experienced on the waterfront that day.
Naturally, my first harmonica is a diatonic. It’s the easiest for beginners, yet is also a powerful instrument in the hands of a professional.
Specifically, a diatonic harmonica is designed to play in only one key – in other words, there’s a separate instrument for each key, with a diatonic in the key of C (the note on the first hole) being the most favored and easiest to understand and learn. For beginners, I love the fact that you can get a good quality, 10-hole, diatonic harmonica with numbers above each hole, a great aid to practice! For players just starting out the best are the Hohner Special 20 and the Lee Oskar Major Diatonic. The great thing is that these enable a beginner to learn how to play blues, rock, folk and country music.
In time and with dedicated practice, I hope to progress to the more demanding chromatic harmonica, the other main type of the instrument (though there are several other types too). The chromatic mainly uses a button-operated sliding bar to redirect air from the hole in the mouthpiece to the selected reed plate, although, as I recently learned, the Hohner 270 12-hole harmonica has a hands-free feature that allows a player to shift tones by using the lips to move the mouthpiece up and down so the player can also use another instrument like guitar at the same time.
That’s way off in the future for me!
For now, these are the simple tips that helped get me started, that I hope might inspire others to realize how easy it is.
1. Buy a diatonic harmonica.
2. Don’t pucker but push the harmonica into the lips, which makes it easier to play single notes.
3. Familiarize yourself with harmonica melodies by listening to recordings. There are lots of examples, including video, on the Internet.
4. Concentrate on basic playing techniques, with single blow and draw notes, moving up and down the instrument one hole at a time.
They say a beginner usually takes a few weeks to one month to become proficient at knowing, by feel, exactly where each hole is and to be consistently producing single notes, which is where I’m at right now – and loving every minute of it, I should add. Feel almost like I’m ready to jam!
Next up: bending and other techniques. I can hardly wait!
My fast learning route was via JP Allen, who has helped thousands of harmonica students all over the world. You can get his lessons yourself, right here: Harmonica Lesson Bundle.
